


Strength Among the Flowers

by Leonawriter



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, F/M, Friendship, Gen, the focus is on the friendship but the pairing is plot relevant sooo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 12:46:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15558012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: Angeal knows how to find Zack when the time comes for the trip to Modeoheim because he’s been to the slums often enough by that point. It's only afterwards that Zack finds out that they both have someone in common now.





	Strength Among the Flowers

Zack isn't there, the first time Angeal visits the slums in search of him. 

He'd looked, after Zack had fallen down through the plate, belatedly worried. Too late, of course - just like everything else, it seemed. Too late to find out what was going on with Genesis. Too late to realise it had gone too far already. Too late to realise he couldn't help, and he was part of the problem. Too late to realise that taking his issues regarding his own problems out on other people - people he  _cared_ about - was only going to get them  _hurt._

Zack could have died, from that fall, he realises well after Zack would have hit the ground. Not even mako could save you from a broken neck.

 _He wouldn't have been in danger if he hadn't refused to fight back,_ a sharp, snide voice said that sounded too much like Genesis for his liking.

 _He wouldn't have been in danger if I hadn't attacked him,_ he thought in response. Because it was true, of course it was true. He was the one who had created his own suffering, and Zack's, as well.

So he'd looked, silently and as invisibly as he'd been able to, flitting between the shadows for just long enough to reassure himself that  _Zack was alive_ , that Zack was  _okay,_ and long enough to realise that he'd met a girl, too.

He sees them laugh together, smile together, and part of him hurts, because Zack shouldn't be involved in all of this, he should be free to do whatever he wanted, live his own life - but this was the life he'd chosen, and he was too mixed up in things now to back out, whether he wanted to or not.

But when he comes back a few days later, Zack isn't there. He really thought he would be, after the way he'd seen him making eyes at that girl, but instead it's just him and the church and-

-the flowers?

"Oh! Hello?"

And the girl in the doorway.

...

He finds out that her name is Aerith, and that she likes helping the flowers to grow, and that they also grow at her house. That she's never seen the outside sky. 

He tells her that he's always had a fondness for gardening, and plants in general, as had his best friend - and though it hurts to think of Genesis as such, to think of everything that had happened and that was  _gone_ , never to return, it hurts even more to think for even a second to cut that tie entirely - although Genesis had mainly enjoyed what plants could  _do_ , not able to simply appreciate them for what they were.

She told him how there was someone who'd fallen through the roof the other day, who'd almost walked through the flowers before she'd told him not to - he's shaking his head before she even finishes, muttering something to the effect of  _that sounds just like him._

He doesn't miss the way her eyes harden for just one moment, or the way that, gentle but firm as the mountain, she tells him that this person she'd met, he'd been worried over a friend, who he didn't know how to help. 

She doesn't push or pry or assume, just states what she knows as blunt fact, makes him feel just uncomfortable enough that he leaves - not that he should have stayed as long as he had in the first place, when he was only supposed to be finding out information regarding Genesis' whereabouts and passing them on, or at the very least... making sure that Zack was doing well.

...

The next time he sees her, he hadn't even planned to land in the slums, hadn't even planned to encounter anyone at all. But he's just spent several hours in flight, and for the last half hour or so - he hasn't checked his PHS yet to know exactly  _how_ long - he's been flying with a fried wing, after something electrocuted him mid-air.

Angeal settles himself in the rafters of the church, grateful that he doesn't share Genesis' fate of degradation, and guilty that he feels grateful that it's happening to someone else, someone he had grown up with and loved like a brother, and not him.

He idly wonders if that makes him any more of a monster, or if that was just human. And if it were just a human trait, then he still wanted none of it, no matter how hard it wished to stick.

He doesn't realise he's shedding feathers - some of which are somewhat  _scorched and burnt_ feathers - until he hears a familiar voice calling up at him, saying  _hello, hellooo...?_

The wince he lets out at realising that he's outed himself as inhuman, as something far different from the ordinary SOLDIER the girl had met before, just makes his body cry out in pain, and he grits his teeth against it. For something that could disappear and that he hadn't even been born with, these wings of his could feel pain just like any other part of him could.

"You can come down from there," she continues, "so long as you don't land on the flowers."

It's more like a controlled fall than a true  _landing_ , but he does land somewhere other than on the flowers - he'd mess the plants up, and  _that_ wouldn't do.

Aerith gasps at the sight of him, and he doesn't know if it's because of the fact that the feathers belonged to  _him_ , or because of the state he was in.

"I have a Cure," he says after she shows signs of starting to fuss over him, "I just didn't have a chance to use it until now. It's been... a long day."

He hasn't dismissed his wings while they were injured yet, and he isn't about to start. He notices her watching him as he works the magic on his body, now sat on one of the pews.

"You're... you  _are_ the friend that Zack talked about, aren't you," she says. There's more hesitancy there than when she was being circumspect, but Angeal sighs. He doesn't deny it, though.

"A... lot of people are suffering because of things that I've just stood back and let happen. Things I've  _done_. I've hurt  _Zack,"_ he says, and he wonders what it is about this girl that makes it so easy to open up, so easy to say things he really shouldn't.

She gasps, and backs away a step or two. 

But when he looks up, she's still there - just looking down at her feet, and vaguely sad.

"Zack... I think he's stronger than you think," she says at last.

He laughs, at that - Aerith's only known him for what, all of a few days? Less, given they'd hardly kept in contact from what it sounded like. Compared to the months that Angeal had trained Zack... only to have him show little sign of improvement, only to walk out on him in the middle of enemy territory. 

Perhaps she was right. And perhaps he really didn't know Zack as well as he'd thought.

...

"Did you know that there are Turks following you?" he asks the next time he drops by - literally, and this time without injuries, so his landing is far more graceful. Not as graceful or anywhere near as dramatic as Genesis would, but it suits him just fine.

Aerith purses her lips, and says that yes, she knew. And then her expression shifts, into something more relaxed. She seems to contemplate something for a moment before she speaks again.

"They want something from me," she says with the air of a well-guarded secret. "They want me to go with them. But I've- I've always said no. I... you understand, right?"

Angeal feels uncomfortable in the strange feeling that he knows something that he doesn't think Zack is aware of, regarding his girlfriend - and whatever this was between the two of them, it did seem to be more serious than the girls Zack had always just chatted up whenever he could - but the way she appealed to him, wanted him to-

It rubbed him the wrong way, reminded him of things best left forgotten, memories of Genesis and hard, cold truths about himself and  _you cannot live on that side any longer._

"At least you're still human," he says bitterly. "I don't even have  _that_ much left."

Aerith looks at him sharply, and for a split second it almost looks as though something he'd said had struck a chord with her, had brought up some painful memory, but that didn't make sense, so it had to be his overactive imagination. 

"Zack- Zack said... that, 'normal is overrated', or something like that. I don't think he meant this, but... he was so worried all the time I saw him, I don't... Zack doesn't seem like the kind of person who'd care about things like that."

 _I think he's stronger than you think,_ he remembers her saying, but she doesn't know what's going on, can't understand-

And that, he starts to think to himself as he flies further into the city some time later, might even be why she can see more clearly than most of the ones who  _did_ understand.

...

It's a few weeks until he sees her again, and when he does she isn't happy to see him.

In fact, if he had to make any comparison at all, he'd say that she reminds him of the way Sephiroth had looked at him, upon his first time seeing the man after his... desertion, he supposes. Full of hurt, and a sense of betrayal that was fully earned in all its entirety.

"You made him cry," she says, full of hurt herself. 

He can't really blame her. She treasures Zack so much that anything that hurts him, hurts her, in its own way. 

"He'll recover," he says, and flinches from the angry look she sends him. "Better this than that he wound up dead," he adds, unable to look her in the eye this time.

In some ways, Zack would wield that sword far better than he ever had; he had never been able to bring himself to swing it around enough to get in practice, often preferring to use his fists rather than the family heirloom. Zack, though - Zack never went anywhere without a heavy sword, so it wouldn't be so strange to use when he most needed it.

"I don't know what you did, but... never do it again. I can - I can only pick up the pieces of his heart so many times, you know. And... he isn't the only one who cares about you."

He nods, and he's fully prepared to leave - but she lets him stay a while longer, lets him watch as she tends to the plants.

...

Angeal flinches - again - when he hears heavy SOLDIER-issue boots on the church's floor, and when he turns around he sees Zack coming down the middle toward the flowers, his hair styled differently and the Buster Sword on his back.

It's odd, he thinks - odd, how that sword that had belonged to the Hewley family looked so  _right_ on Zack like that. 

"Aerith? Is this- this is...  _Angeal."_

He had expected Zack to shout at him, to rail at how  _unfair_ this all was, to push the Buster Sword back onto its previous owner, or to tell him to  _get out, get away from Aerith_ , but none of these things happen. Even if he deserves them.

Zack collapses to his knees in front of him, ruining the more mature image he's somehow managed to cultivate in just a few short weeks, tears streaming from his eyes already.

" _Angeal_ ," he says again, voice thick with some sort of emotion, or some mix that he can't even begin to pick apart, "don't you ever- _ever_ do something so stupid again.  _Ever."_ Zack sniffs, and wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand like some kid who's never heard of tissues or handkerchiefs. "I... I always thought you had the answers to everything. Then this started. And now - I don't even care, man. Just... I don't want to lose you like that."

In all honesty, Angeal wondered who was actually the stronger of them, now - and he can't help wondering if it isn't him, who'd contemplated something so awful, or the one crying in front of him, who he had given his honour and dreams to, even if he were still alive to see Zack carry them.

**Author's Note:**

> I’d been wanting to write Angeal and Aerith interacting for the longest time, really? And then today I saw art of them together and my brain just gave me these scenes. When I should’ve gone to bed already, of course.


End file.
